computer age:take advantage and be your own boss

How to Update Windows OS Without Internet Connection

Microsoft made security essentials for making better security of windows the updates of the Microsoft security essentials are released when the bugs are found if you don’t have the internet connection and want to update the New security patches there is software called as AUTOPATCHER.

It allows you to download all the new security packages for your Windows OS.
And finally gives you to update any computer without internet connection.
Steps to Update Windows OS Without Internet Connection:

•     Download Autopatcher from here-> Download here
•     Install and run it..
•     It will ask you for your current OS select it.
•     Select your OS 32 bit or 64bit.
•     List will be shown.
•     Select and download the updates and click on Download button.
•     After that copy to Pendrive or portable media and install in your PC.
•     Now insert this Pendrive into your system for which you have downloaded all these updates and install them.
• Its easy to implement and is the best method to install the updates in Offline mode and secure your PC. This works for all windows OS (Window 7/Vista/XP).

The Car Dashboard That Wants to Be an iPad

Entertainment and navigation systems in automobiles have come a long way since the days of eight-track tape players and folding maps, but not when it comes to changing the radio station.

Entertainment and navigation systems in automobiles have come a long way but one-touch virtual buttons projected on the screens of new audio and navigation systems often seem to need two or three touches. Joe White explains on Lunch Break

One-touch virtual buttons projected on the screens of new audio and navigation systems often seem to need two or three touches. Where's that comedy channel on satellite radio? Buried below two or three busy screen menus that require far more time to decipher than is safe at 70 miles per hour.
Sure, there are voice-activated controls. But too often they seem to be programmed in a language other than the one I speak. I've had all these problems in new cars I've driven recently, and consumer surveys show I'm not alone.
Now, federal safety regulators are throwing up a yellow caution flag as auto makers push to install ever more sophisticated entertainment and navigation systems in cars.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration plans to issue soon, likely by the end of the year, new guidelines for the design of in-car multimedia systems aimed at reducing their potential to tempt drivers' eyes away from the road.
The new guidelines could change the way multimedia systems are designed, and would come amid a push by the federal government to curb distractions in autos. The National Transportation Safety Board on Tuesday said all states should ban cellphone use while driving, and called on phone makers to develop features that discourage use when people are behind the wheel.
Of equal or greater concern to the industry are the complaints from consumers. A recent survey of more than 18,000 vehicle owners by market-research firm J.D. Power and Associates found high levels of dissatisfaction with many factory-installed navigation systems.
In response, auto makers are hiring more engineers adept at designing so-called human-machine interfaces, and adapting some of the thinking that goes into products like Apple Inc.'s iPad to make systems that are rich in content, yet easy to use at highway speeds.
But the gap between the industry's goals for ease of use and the systems on sale today is uncomfortably large.
In J.D. Power's most recent study, released last month, respondents identified an average of 351 problems per 100 vehicles, up from 206.5 problems per 100 a year earlier. Most of the complaints were about the difficulty of using important functions, such as entering an address into the navigation system's route-mapping system, says Andy Bernhard, a director at J.D. Power.
The average index score for entering a destination was 6.4 on a scale of 10, Mr. Bernhard says. "That's failure," he says. "If you were to mark 6.4 for a cruise ship or a hotel, would you go back there?"

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Consumers accustomed to having a rich array of music, social media and Web access at their fingertips through smartphones and tablet devices such as the iPad, want access to their digital lives behind the wheel. But even the iPad, praised for its ease of use, is unsafe to operate with one hand on a steering wheel and a foot on the gas.
Even before NHTSA officials began talking about formal guidelines, car makers had adopted their own standards for designing safe infotainment systems, including a requirement that no task should require a driver to look away from the road for more than 15 seconds. Car makers aim for much shorter look-away times, and are using displays projected onto the windshield and voice controls to cut the time a driver's eyes leave the highway.
A common complaint with systems that use virtual buttons on a touch screen is that poking them often doesn't appear to produce any result.
Customers do a "double take," punching buttons repeatedly, says Marios Zenios, vice president for Chrysler Group LLC's Uconnect systems and services. "That's a huge item we focus on," he says.
The solution: More computational horsepower to speed up response times, and features designed to reassure the driver that the system knows a button was pushed. Ford Motor Co., for example, uses a tone so customers "know something is happening," says Jennifer Brace, a user interface design engineer, who led an overhaul of the look and feel of Ford's MyFord Touch infotainment system that will be offered on both new models and to customers who already own cars equipped with the system. Complaints about MyFord Touch dragged down the No. 2 U.S. auto maker's quality scores in recent surveys by Consumer Reports and J.D. Power.
Ms. Brace says Ford is also simplifying many of the MyFord Touch system's screens. On the new system's radio screens there will be six buttons or less, she says, and the look of the lettering will be streamlined. "On the previous system, there were five different font sizes on the radio system. On the new system there will be two," Ms. Brace says.
Some auto makers are looking to make their systems look less new, embracing what customers may be comfortable with already. Chrysler's Dodge Charger navigation system was the top scorer among the systems J.D. Power rated. The system is built by Garmin and uses the look and feel of that company's popular hand-held navigation devices.
The ultimate solution to difficult-to-use touch-screen infotainment and navigation systems could be technology that renders jabbing virtual buttons on a screen unnecessary.
"We are moving to natural voice recognition" that would allow consumers to instruct their cars to plot a route or tune in to a channel on Sirius XM by giving a straightforward command, says Wayne Powell, general manager of electrical systems at the Toyota Technical Center in Ann Arbor, Mich. Toyota's recently launched Entune system is a step in that direction, he says.
Mr. Powell and other industry executives caution that voice-recognition technology still needs a lot of improvement. But they point to products such as Siri, the conversational concierge embedded in Apple's latest iPhone, as a sign that voice recognition is headed into the mainstream.
"A short time ago, voice-recognition systems were an annoyance," he says. Now, as more consumers experience the technology, Mr. Powell says they'll ask, "What do you mean, I can't talk to my car?"

Google Plans Online Music Store to Challenge Apple, Amazon

Google Inc. is creating an online music store to compete with Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., though the company may open the service without the rights to sell songs from many of the biggest record labels, according to people familiar with the matter.
According to these people, all four of the major music companies have held talks to license their catalogs to Google for the new online store. But only the smallest, Citigroup Inc.'s EMI Group, is close to a deal, they said. EMI's artists include Katy Perry, Gorillaz and Pink Floyd.
None ...

A Device for When You're Hurt, Lost or Feeling Scared

Two weeks ago, alone in a hotel room 3,000 miles from home, I suddenly felt an intense pain in my head, stronger than any headache I've ever experienced. Light was unbearable, I felt too dizzy to stand and the nausea was overwhelming. I called my husband in Washington, D.C., and whispered my symptoms, which I now know were most likely the signs of a migraine.

The 5Star Responder from GreatCall Inc. is a small, 1.8-ounce gadget that allows users instant access in the case of a medical or personal emergency. WSJ's Katherine Boehret says many people will find it handy but the activation and monthly fees could add up.

This week, I tested a product I could have used during that scare: the 5Star Responder from GreatCall Inc., a sort of portable OnStar. It's a 1.8-ounce gadget with a speaker and microphone that clips onto a keychain or shirt. One large center button calls an always on-duty concierge, who knows information about each caller—like medications, preferred hospitals, emergency contacts and the caller's location (using built-in GPS). Once the situation is assessed, a nurse can speak with the caller, emergency services can be dispatched or, in less urgent scenarios, the agent can stay on the line with the caller.
GreatCall's 5Star Responder is one of the first truly portable emergency-call devices. It runs on Verizon's network, giving it coverage anywhere a Verizon phone works. Other emergency-call devices like Medical Alert by LifeStation work in the home and are geared toward seniors who rarely go out.

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GreatCall

The 5Star Responder has a speaker, microphone and a button that calls an agent or 911.

The 5Star Responder will be available Wednesday from GreatCall.com and in stores like Wal-Mart and Sears on Oct. 23. It's $50, plus a $35 activation fee—or $25 if you sign up online. A $15 monthly service fee is applied, with additional family members paying $9 monthly. Also on Wednesday, 5Star Urgent Response will become available as a $15 iPhone app in Apple's App Store, though the monthly service fees still apply. The website, MyGreatCall.com, where users set up their personal data, also launches.

When It's Handy

Still, the 5Star Responder is yet another thing people will need to remember to plug in and charge (one charge lasts roughly three days in standby, the company estimates). It also felt noticeably heavy on my keychain. Yet 5Star Responder could really make a difference in situations where people don't call 911 because they don't believe they have an emergency, like not taking the symptoms of a heart attack seriously.
The device isn't just for seniors with health problems. Take a child who is too young to have a cellphone and gets separated from his family at a festival. When he presses the 5Star button, an agent determines his location and gets parents on a conference call with the child via the device's speaker.

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Pourio Lee

The 1.8 ounce device can fit in a small purse or clip onto a keychain.

The device also could be good for a runner who doesn't want to carry a heavy smartphone and collapses in pain during a run. Or a person walking in a sketchy neighborhood who wants the agent to talk to him until he gets to his car.
The device will call 911 directly if you hold down the call button for five seconds. If the Responder's center button is pressed and a caller can't respond, the agent will try to call the device back and an alternative phone number, such as an emergency contact, before finally dispatching emergency personnel.

Like the Real Deal

To test the 5Star Responder and a prereleased version of the iPhone app, I "suffered" through a variety of pretend scenarios. These included revisiting my above-described migraine, walking alone at night in an unsafe neighborhood, heart-attack-like symptoms and reporting a break-in at my house in the middle of the night.
I informed the agent on each call that this was a test case. They still acted like it was a real call, doing things like asking me to hold while they contacted paramedics, simulating the time it would take to dispatch emergency personnel.

Walking Alone

In one test, I told the call agent that I was walking in a neighborhood that didn't feel safe, and he offered to call the police to come to my location. I told him I wanted to stay on the line with someone as I walked and he spoke with me for another five minutes until I got to my destination.
Once, I pressed the call button but hung up in the middle of the first ring.
Seconds later, the 5Star Responder device rang, and when I pressed the center button to answer, an agent told me he was calling back to make sure everything was safe and secure.
When I called to report someone in my house, the agent asked me to hold while she sent police. When she got back on the line, I asked her to connect me with my emergency-contact person, and she initiated a call to my husband.
When I called and described my migraine experience as if it was really happening, the agent suggested sending emergency-medical personnel, but I asked if I could speak to a nurse.
My agent transferred me to GreatCall's LiveNurse service, which took about 40 seconds before that service's operator transferred my call to an actual nurse. Before talking with me about my situation, the nurse asked me to spell my name and give my birth date.
This relatively lengthy process could be problematic in some scenarios. When I was suffering from my migraine, I could barely say a sentence on the phone with my husband because even the sound of his voice in my ear was excruciating.
In the end, the nurse suggested sending paramedics because I reported shallow breathing and an irregularly fast heartbeat.

Sony Looks for Vitality in Dying Breed 

TOKYO—Sony Corp.'s PlayStation Vita, the company's first new handheld videogame system in seven years, will be launched Saturday, offering an important litmus test for whether consumers still want a dedicated portable game machine in a world where inexpensive and, sometimes free, games played on smartphones are all the rage.
Vita will make its debut in Japan, where Sony said preorders for the device sold out quickly. The device will become available in the U.S. and Europe in February. It is packed with cutting-edge technology including a 5-inch, touchscreen next-generation display, front and rear cameras, and a bevy of motion sensors.